Jet Provost T.5 "The Poachers" - Sword - 1/72

[Dennis_C]

Hi everyone,

 

Not been posting RFIs for a while for various reasons. No time to take photoes, no sunny weather to take good photoes, no time to write articles... Now it's time to change things so I'm presenting here the photoes of my latest model I just finished this week. This is a very well known Jet Provost, but not an Airfix kit which has been invading RFI section recently. I've gone the other way and challenged Sword kit of T.5.

 

 

Not much aftermarket or scratchbuilding applied. I had Pavla MB mk.4 seats, Reskit wheels (main wheels only as their front wheel is visibly small so I used kit's option), Airdecal sheet is used for The Poachers scheme. 

 

 

Some constuction notes: 

• Canopy requires attention! It is about 1.5 mm too wide at its center. It's okay at both ends though. And more importantly - two canopy parts match each other so this stays usable. My solution was to add plastic stripes to the cockpit insert sides. This made fuselage 'fatter' right where needed. At the same time I hardpressed fuselage at the start and end of the cockpit so no inserts were needed there. On the bottom I did not need an insert either. 
• Exhaust is anemic. It's twice smaller than it should be. Just throw it away and scratchbuild the pipe (so did I) or find a replacement in spares. 
• Resin seats are usable but no harness is provided. So I chose to buy Pavla seats. Also cockpit is too deep. I added quite a bit of plastic to raise seats to appropriate level. 
• For an aerobatic team aircraft you need to cut wingtip tanks and add bare wingtips. Nothing complex. The only nuance - Sword gives us transparent navigation lights but these are useless as they do not fit wingtips at all. I just scratched them myself. Probably single-piece fully transparent wingtips could be a better option for Sword.  
• Instruction sheet is horrible. Sword likes to picture nicer and more detailed parts in the instruction than it gets you for real. For instance, in this kit main undercarriage construction requires photo references. Little transparent navigation lights on top and bottom are provided on the sprue, there are location recesses on the fuselage, but these lights are ignored on the instruction at all!
• Stencils placing reference is just a puzzle. I used walkaround photoes to put most of the stencils. 
• Techmod decals are thin, nicely printed, very readable. But for some reason they tend to bend over so on my XW360 some inscriptions were painted over by RAFC technicians. 
• Aftermarket Airdecal sheet is superb. I had only couple cracks on a long blue stripes that go from the bottom fuselage and end on the tail. I almost have not torn them and applied almost symmetrically!!! Still makes me think once more whether building civil airliners with their cheatlines is a good idea...
• Use references for aerials! Looks like these changed over Jet Provost's career. Mine are in line with The Poachers photoes from the 70s but not in line with the instruction sheet. 
• Add enough weight. This is a strong tail sitter! Luckily there is a lot of space in front fuselage. 
• Paints used are Hobby Color FS36440 (H325), Flat Red (H13), white, black etc as appropriate. Blue on the wing tips is mixed from a secret proportion of blues and white which I will never be able to reproduce - seems almost spot on? 

 

That is all regarding construction. A bit more photoes: 

 

 

Thank you for watching!!! 

 

All the best,

Dennis

Edited August 31, 2020 by Dennis_C

[Wulfman]

Lovely looking model, nice build and finish !

 

Wulfman

[kapam]

What a gem!

Clearly a very well built and well researched model.

[Harry Lime]

Dennis,

 

The extra work has really paid off here, very nicely done!

 

Mark.

[Natter]

The T5 is the prettier Jet Provost IMHO.  Can a Jet Provost ever be 'pretty'?  It sounds as though the kit has challenges, but the finished result is lovely.

[Dennis_C]

Thanks everyone for likes and comments!

2 hours ago, Natter said:

The T5 is the prettier Jet Provost IMHO.  Can a Jet Provost ever be 'pretty'?  It sounds as though the kit has challenges, but the finished result is lovely.

I like the look of T.5 more as well. Earlier versions look a bit archaic to me. Also T.5s had a very appealing red-white-grey scheme. Not sure if T.3 or T.4 had this as well. 

Challenges are there as always with Sword kits. Nothing that makes kit unbuildable though.

[klubman01]

Nicely done.  Don't see this colour scheme very often.

Trevor

[ColinChipmunkfan]

Always like to see a JP, especially one done so well.   The underside Poachers scheme is complicated and difficult to get right but yours looks good.  And yes the earlier versions had the colourful scheme.

[Dennis_C]

5 minutes ago, ColinChipmunkfan said:

The underside Poachers scheme is complicated and difficult to get right but yours looks good.

Thank you!

The Poachers stripes are decals in my case. The scheme consisted of 4 parts on Airdecal sheet - 1) front piece with three parallel stripes and white arrow, 2) long straight stripe on the underside, 3,4) two large bits starting on underside and bending over the fuselage to the tail. 

1 and 2 were comparatively easy to apply, although you really have to make sure they stay straight. 3 and 4 were challenging. Especially the second one that you have to make symmetrical to the first so that they meet each other on the rudder and look symmetrical from top side. 

[Ptmvarsityfan]

Very nicely made and construction notes are very useful. Good work!

Cheers, Paul

[SAT69]

Great build of a military aerobatic team airplane probably not that well known on this side of the Atlantic. I'd read about the team many years ago but not seen color pictures. I think their markings are quite attractive.

[Spitfire31]

Superbly clean and attractive model!

 

Kind regards,

 

Joachim

[Booty003]

That is exceptional skill on such a small model - fantastic work mate, she looks lovely.

[F-32]

That's a real quality build

[Dennis_C]

Hi, and thanks for comments, folks!

 

On 31/08/2020 at 13:16, ptmvarsityfan said:

construction notes are very useful.

Yeah, not at all. Just wanted to summarise some notes I did. There is something special about Sword models that they have overall good quality surfaces - better than average short-run, but some parts are not good/not detailed/not engineered well and require extra efforts. And vague instructions make you do some more research too. 

 

On 31/08/2020 at 14:30, SAT69 said:

Great build of a military aerobatic team airplane probably not that well known on this side of the Atlantic

I guess this one is generally not well known outside of the UK at all. It's not among top trainers, neither was used by worldwide known acrobatic teams. Just a reliable and forgiving workhorse - isn't it? UK actually have an amazing line-up of trainers and trainer versions of front-line aircraft. Quite unique compared to other aircraft manufacturing countries.